Published March 10, 2009 at 2:00 PM
"Meet Dan Porter. He is really cool," wrote Iminlikewithyou founder Charles Forman in an e-mail introduction to the startup's new CEO last month. "He's so old, he remembers when songs on Guitar Hero used to be on the radio."
Forman, who is 28, may benefit from a little adult supervision from Porter, 42, the former senior vice president of corporate development for Virgin USA. While endearing to many, Forman's style has also offended some. His oversized business card, for example, says, "Chances are, I gave you this card because I didn't feel like talking to you anymore. Just kidding! LOLZ!" It also contains one of comedian George Carlin's seven words you can never say on TV.
In this episode of The Deal's Behind the Money video show, Porter talks about what it's like to be the resident grownup at Iminlikewithyou and argues that Forman's irreverent style resonates well with the company's target audience of 15- to 25-year-olds. Watch the video below or download it at iTunes.
"He's actually one of the smartest people I've ever met," says Porter of Forman. "And I think his public persona maybe hides the fact that he actually works really hard on the product and really cares about it. But he's funny and irreverent, and there's something about the site I think that captures the zeitgeist of his humor. ... Aspects of the site that flow out from his personality and his sense of humor are what make kids just see it and really get hooked on it and identify with it."
Investors have certainly warmed to Forman. Y Combinator provided seed funding in 2006, and
in 2007 Forman raised an angel round of "a couple hundred thousand dollars"
from Betaworks and well-known angels Ron Conway (an early backer of Google Inc.), Kevin Rose (founder of Digg Inc., Revision3 and the recently deadpooled Pownce) and Paul Buchheit (creator
of Google's Gmail and co-founder of FriendFeed Inc.). Last year, Iminlikewithyou raised a $1.5 million Series A led by Spark Capital and including Marc Andreessen (founder of Netscape and Ning), Baseline Ventures, Betaworks and Conway.
One of Porter's first moves comes Thursday in the form of a name change for the company. From now on, Iminlikewithyou will be known as Omgpop.
"After numerous misspellings of our name on Twitter and Google and a very long URL, we decided to keep it simple," says Porter.
Click here to see our earlier video interview with Forman. - Mary Kathleen Flynn
For comments or suggestions about Deal Video, please contact
mwoehr@thedeal.com. Use the following embed code to run this video on
your Web site: <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="437" height="370" id="viddler_a1273b12"><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.viddler.com/player/a1273b12/" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed src="http://www.viddler.com/player/a1273b12/" width="437" height="370" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" name="viddler_a1273b12" wmode="transparent"></embed></object>
Ken deRegt will retire as head of fixed income at Morgan Stanley and be replaced by Michael Heaney and Robert Rooney. For other updates launch today's Movers & shakers slideshow.
Search
